Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge
The wind here never really stops blowing. There’s a pause, now and again, as if to take a breath, and then it returns.
The wind blowing across the saltgrass prairie carries the scents of saltwater and mud. This far inland, there’s nothing fishy or unpleasant about the odor; it’s just a tang to remind you where you are. Blowing across the ponds cools the wind, too. At midday, resting in the shade, the wind feels almost chill against my skin, like standing a few feet away from an open refrigerator.
Apart from the sound of the wind, the only noises out here belong to the birds and bugs. Birds chirp and whistle and caw to each othre as they hunt in the reeds and socialize on the tops of bushes. They are a raucous bunch, and largely drown out the humming of insects.
These ponds are also home to alligators, though I’ve seen only one today. There is a quiet menace to these beasts; they seem so slow and placid, and yet I know them to be fast, deadly predators. I gave him a wide berth and moved on.
This place is beautiful, in the way any prairie is beautiful: in the colors and textures that lay against each other in waves. Green and yellow grasses topped with red-brown shoots or golden seed stalks. Cattails and reeds giving way to saltgrass and shrubs. Small wildflowers in yellow and red and pink popping up along the roads, and farther inland, stands of scrubby trees.
It hasn’t rained for a month or more, now, and many of the ponds are dry, or little more than mudholes. I shall have to return when the rains do, and see this place in another season.
